Publications by authors named "Florian Wegner"

Background: Parkinson's disease (PD) is a chronic and multifaceted disease with a variety of motor and non-motor symptoms. The safe symptomatic drug therapy of often multimorbid patients places enormous demands on the competence, communication and coordination of the treating physicians, particularly in the outpatient sector.

Objectives: This study aimed to explore aspects of drug safety and interdisciplinary communication in the outpatient sector of PD patients.

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Gender differences in progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) may become relevant for clinical trials, treatment decisions and patient counseling. To study gender associated differences we conducted a retrospective data analysis of 191 male and 157 female PSP patients from a large multicenter observational cohort in Germany. While no differences in motor skills, disease severity, daily living abilities, global cognitive status and depressive symptoms were observed between genders, male patients showed significantly higher apathy scores, a finding also noted in other neurological diseases.

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BackgroundProgressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) is a rare neurodegenerative movement disorder clinically characterized by falls, axial rigidity, vertical supranuclear gaze palsy, bradykinesia, and cognitive decline. There is a relative lack of studies on the functional neuroimaging correlates of cognitive impairment in PSP.ObjectiveThis study investigated the relationship between regional cerebral glucose metabolism as assessed by static F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) with global scaling and the profile of cognitive performance according to the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease (CERAD) test battery in a sample of PSP patients representative of clinical practice.

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This study explores the involvement of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) in executive functions, particularly cognitive flexibility, in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients. Utilizing a computerized Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST) and local field potential (LFP) recordings from implanted deep brain stimulation (DBS) electrodes, we investigated task-specific neural dynamics. Behavioural results demonstrated increased error rates and prolonged response times in trials requiring set-shifting and rule induction via cross-temporal information integration.

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Introduction: Orthostatic tremor is an infrequent movement disorder characterized by a high-frequency tremor manifesting primarily in the standing position. This condition can lead to relevant restrictions of mobility in everyday life and adversely affect the quality of life. The etiology has not been conclusively clarified.

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Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating neurodegenerative disease characterized by the degeneration of upper and lower motoneurons. The four most frequently mutated genes causing familial ALS (fALS) are C9orf72, FUS, SOD1, and TARDBP. Some of the related wild-type proteins comprise intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) which favor their assembly in liquid droplets-the biophysical mechanism behind the formation of physiological granules such as stress granules (SGs).

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The aim of this study was to assess the presence of Alexithymia in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients compared to their caregivers (CG) and to investigate whether Alexithymia progressed over a 4-year observational period. Alexithymia in PD is a cognitive affective disturbance resulting in difficulty to identify, distinguish and describe feelings and it is known to be strongly associated with health-related quality of life and other cognitive/ neuropsychiatric symptoms. So far, there have been no longitudinal investigations of Alexithymia in PD.

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Background: Patients with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) suffer from several neuropsychological impairments. These mainly affect the frontal lobe and subcortical brain structures. However, a scale for the assessment of cognitive and neuropsychiatric disability in PSP is still missing.

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Parkinson's disease (PD) is a chronic neurodegenerative disease of the elderly. Patients suffer from progressive motor and non-motor symptoms. Further, PD patients often present geriatric features like multimorbidity and polypharmacotherapy.

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Acute care of patients in the emergency department (ED) can be very challenging when patients attend EDs without their important medical information. This is especially problematic for multimorbid patients under polypharmacy. The aim of this study was to assess systematically the frequency and clinical relevance of incomplete medical data upon ED admission.

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Article Synopsis
  • * A study analyzed motor responses in 47 PSP, 26 MSA, and 71 PD patients, finding that although PSP and MSA generally have poor levodopa responses, some symptoms still improved.
  • * Specifically, PSP patients showed improvements in bradykinesia and rigidity, while MSA patients improved in bradykinesia and action tremor, indicating the need for tailored treatment strategies for atypical parkinsonism.
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Introduction: Neuropsychiatric symptoms in particular impair health-related quality of life (QoL) of patients with Parkinson's disease and atypical Parkinsonian syndromes. For this reason, various scales have been developed for detection of neuropsychiatric symptoms, such as the Scale for evaluation of neuropsychiatric disorders in Parkinson's disease (SEND-PD).

Objective: First, the objective of this study was to explore the interrelation between the SEND-PD and clinical parameters in patients with Parkinson's disease and thus confirm its validity.

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Background: Multiple system atrophy (MSA), an atypical parkinsonian syndrome, is a rapidly progressive neurodegenerative disease with currently no established fluid biomarkers available. MSA is characterized by an oligodendroglial α-synucleinopathy, progressive neuronal cell loss and concomitant astrocytosis. Here, we investigate glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) and neurofilament light chain (NfL) as fluid biomarkers for differential diagnosis, assessment of clinical disease severity and prediction of disease progression in MSA.

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  • * A study evaluated the impact of anticholinergic burden on both motor and non-motor symptoms in patients with Parkinson's disease and atypical Parkinsonian syndromes using two scoring systems (ADS and GABS).
  • * Results indicated that while the anticholinergic burden was higher in Parkinson's patients, its correlation with various clinical symptoms was weak, and the GABS may overestimate this burden due to its inclusion of anti-parkinsonian drugs.
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Background: Diagnostic criteria for progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) include midbrain atrophy in MRI and hypometabolism in [F]fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)-positron emission tomography (PET) as supportive features. Due to limited data regarding their relative and sequential value, there is no recommendation for an algorithm to combine both modalities to increase diagnostic accuracy. This study evaluated the added value of sequential imaging using state-of-the-art methods to analyse the images regarding PSP features.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to create a shorter version of the Progressive Supranuclear Palsy quality of life scale (PSP-QoL) to make it easier for patients, especially those with cognitive impairments, to complete.
  • Involved a retrospective analysis of data from 245 PSP patients in Germany, resulting in a condensed 12-item scale that covers mental and physical aspects of daily living.
  • The new scale, called the PSP-ShoQoL, showed strong correlations with existing measures of quality of life and demonstrated its sensitivity to changes over time.
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Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) leads to death within 2-5 yr. Currently, available drugs only slightly prolong survival. We present novel insights into the pathophysiology of (SOD1)- and in particular (FUS)-ALS by revealing a supposedly central role of glycolic acid (GA) and D-lactic acid (DL)-both putative products of the Parkinson's disease associated glyoxylase DJ-1.

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The new lithium arsenidotetrelates LiSiAs, LiGeAs, LiSiAs, LiGeAs and LiSnAs were synthesized ball milling and structurally characterized by Rietveld analysis of X-ray powder diffraction data. The aliovalent substitution of lithium in hexagonal LiAs by introducing a tetravalent tetrel cation stabilizes cubic structures for LiTtAs (Tt = Si, Ge) in the space group 3̄ and for the lithium richer compound LiTtAs (Tt = Si, Ge, Sn) in the higher symmetrical space group 3̄ (no. 225).

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  • Multiple system atrophy (MSA) is a serious disease that affects movement and is hard to treat.
  • Researchers studied MSA patients to see what other health problems they have and how many medications they take.
  • They found that MSA patients have more health issues, especially related to the bladder and kidneys, and take more medications, which can lead to dangerous drug interactions.
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Severe acute respiratory coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes neurological disease in the peripheral and central nervous system (PNS and CNS, respectively) of some patients. It is not clear whether SARS-CoV-2 infection or the subsequent immune response are the key factors that cause neurological disease. Here, we addressed this question by infecting human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived CNS and PNS neurons with SARS-CoV-2.

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Tau seed amplification assays (SAAs) directly measure the seeding activity of tau and would therefore be ideal biomarkers for clinical trials targeting seeding-competent tau in Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, the precise relationship between tau seeding measured by SAA and the levels of pathological forms of tau in the AD brain remains unknown. We developed a new tau SAA based on full-length 0N3R tau with sensitivity in the low fg/ml range and used it to characterize 103 brain samples from three independent cohorts.

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Article Synopsis
  • Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) patients, typically older adults, have a distinct pattern of health comorbidities and often take multiple medications compared to those without neurodegenerative diseases.
  • The study analyzed data from over 600 patients, revealing higher rates of circulatory and nervous system diseases in PSP patients, alongside increased occurrences of conditions like diabetes and polyneuropathies.
  • The PSP group showed significantly more polypharmacy, leading to a higher risk of severe drug interactions, highlighting the need for careful management of treatment in these patients.
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Background: To date, studies on positron emission tomography (PET) with F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) in progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) usually included PSP cohorts overrepresenting patients with Richardson's syndrome (PSP-RS).

Objectives: To evaluate FDG-PET in a patient sample representing the broad phenotypic PSP spectrum typically encountered in routine clinical practice.

Methods: This retrospective, multicenter study included 41 PSP patients, 21 (51%) with RS and 20 (49%) with non-RS variants of PSP (vPSP), and 46 age-matched healthy controls.

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Article Synopsis
  • Brain MRI is used for diagnosing progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), but the effectiveness of various analysis methods for different PSP types—especially those besides Richardson's syndrome—is uncertain.
  • The study compared three reading strategies for MRI analysis (visual descriptions, manual planimetry, and automatic volumetry) across 41 PSP patients (21 with RS and 20 with variant PSP) and 46 healthy controls.
  • Results showed that while automatic volumetric support led to high accuracy, a machine learning approach (support vector machine) achieved the best overall accuracy (87.4%), with better sensitivity for diagnosing variant PSP cases.
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